Still Paying for the Civil War

Veterans' Benefits Live On Long After Bullets Stop

This is the story of 84-year-old Irene Triplett, who still receives a VA pension for her father's service in the Civil War. The VA is also still paying benefits to 16 widows and children of veterans from the 1898 Spanish-American War and 4,038 widows, sons and daughters of World War I veterans.

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Updated May 9, 2014 5:20 p.m. ET

WILKESBORO, N.C.—Each month,
Irene Triplett
collects $73.13 from the Department of Veterans Affairs, a pension payment for her father's military service—in the Civil War.

More than 3 million men fought and 530,000 men died in the conflict between North and South. Pvt.
Mose Triplett
joined the rebels, deserted on the road to Gettysburg, defected to the Union and married so late in life to a woman so young that their daughter Irene is today 84 years old—and the last child of any Civil War veteran still on the VA benefits rolls.

Mose Triplett, second from right, with his first wife, Mary, and unidentified people. After Mary's death in the 1920s, Pvt. Triplett married Elida Hall, 50 years his junior. She suffered from mental disabilities, as did their daughter Irene.
Collection of Dorothy Killian

Ms.
Triplett's
pension, small as it is, stands as a reminder that war's bills don't stop coming when the guns fall silent. The VA is still paying benefits to 16 widows and children of veterans from the 1898 Spanish-American War.

The last U.S. World War I veteran died in 2011. But 4,038 widows, sons and daughters get monthly VA pension or other payments. The government's annual tab for surviving family from those long-ago wars comes to $16.5 million.

Spouses, parents and children of deceased veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan received $6.7 billion in the 2013 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. Payments are based on financial need, any disabilities, and whether the veteran's death was tied to military service.

Those payments don't include the costs of fighting or caring for the veterans themselves. A Harvard University study last year projected the final bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would hit $4 trillion to $6 trillion in the coming decades.

Irene Triplett, 84, the last living recipient of VA benefits connected to the Civil War. Her father, Mose Triplett, fought for both South and North.
Michael M. Phillips/The Wall Street Journal (Ms. Triplett), Jerry Orton (certificate)

Eric Shinseki,
the secretary of Veterans Affairs, often cites President
Abraham Lincoln's
call, in his second inaugural address, for Americans "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan."

"The promises of President Abraham Lincoln are being delivered, 150 years later, by President
Barack Obama,
" Secretary Shinseki said in a speech last fall. "And the same will be true 100 years from now—the promises of this president will be delivered by a future president, as yet unborn."

A declaration of war sets in motion expenditures that can span centuries, whether the veterans themselves were heroes, cowards or something in between.

Ms. Triplett's father, Pvt. Mose Triplett, was born in 1846, on the mountainous Tennessee border in Watauga County, N.C. He was 16 years old when he got caught up in the fratricidal violence of the Civil War. North Carolina seceded from the Union soon after Confederate forces attacked federal troops at Fort Sumter, S.C., on April 12, 1861.

Confederate records show Pvt. Triplett joined the 53rd North Carolina Infantry Regiment in May 1862. He spent half of that enlistment hospitalized, though records aren't clear whether for illness or a gunshot wound to the shoulder that he suffered at some point during the war.

In January 1863, Pvt. Triplett transferred to the 26th North Carolina Infantry Regiment. The regiment's farmers, tradesmen and mountain men were commanded by 20-year-old Col. Henry Burgwyn, Jr., a strict drillmaster educated at the Virginia Military Institute, according to
David McGee's
regimental history. Earlier, in 1859, Col. Burgwyn had been one of the VMI cadets dispatched to provide security at the hanging of John Brown, the famous abolitionist.

In early 1863, Pvt. Triplett joined a Confederate regiment, the 26th North Carolina Infantry, commanded by an officer the soldiers called the 'boy colonel.'

Col. Burgwyn's martinet ways alienated his men at first. But he won their affection and a reputation for coolness under fire when he guided the regiment across a swollen river after the Southern defeat at New Bern, N.C.

The regiment spent months sparring with Federal forces. In June 1863, the men were posted outside Fredericksburg, Va., trading artillery rounds with Union troops across the Rappahannock River. On June 15, the North Carolinians began the long march through the Shenandoah River Valley, across a slice of Maryland and into Gettysburg, Pa. Gen.
Robert E. Lee
intended to give the North a taste of the war, fought so far mostly on Southern soil.

Unable to read or write, Pvt. Triplett signed an X when enlisting in the Union's 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry.
National Archives

Along the way, Pvt. Triplett fell ill with fever and went to a Confederate hospital in an old tobacco warehouse in Danville, Va. Eight days later, he disappeared. Pvt. Triplett was "present or accounted for until he deserted on June 26, 1863," state records say.

He missed a terrible battle for his regiment, and the South, whose loss at Gettysburg portended its final defeat. Of the regiment's 800 men who fought at Gettysburg, 734 were killed, wounded or captured.

There was a strong strain of Union sympathy in western North Carolina. Friendly locals often helped hide Confederate deserters. Pvt. Triplett crossed the mountains to Knoxville, Tenn., where on Aug. 1, 1864, he joined a Union regiment, the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry. Military records listed him as a farmer, 5 feet 8 inches, blue eyes and sandy hair. He signed his enlistment contract with an X.

An Army surgeon certified him "free from all bodily defects and mental infirmity, which would in any way disqualify him from performing the duties of a soldier." The recruiting officer swore that Pvt. Triplett was "entirely sober when enlisted." Pvt. Triplett's older brother, Darby, joined the same day.

"He served his time out with the Union so he would get a pension," said Pvt. Triplett's grandson,
Charlie Triplett,
of North Wilkesboro, N.C.

Pvt. Triplett's Union regiment was nicknamed "
Kirk's
Raiders," after its daring, Tennessee-born commander, Col. George Washington Kirk. Col. Kirk, a carpenter, rocketed from private to commander of a regiment he assembled from Union supporters in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee.

Pvt. Triplett's new regiment slipped in and out of North Carolina to destroy Confederate supply depots, railroads, and bridges in the region where Pvt. Triplett grew up, according to a history by Matthew Bumgarner.

Col. George Washington Kirk, commander of 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry, with his wife, Mariah Louisa Kirk; far left with his father Alexander, standing, and his brother John, at left
Collection of Joey Maurer Woolridge and Leon Kirk; collection of Leon Kirk via Tarheel Press

At times, Col. Kirk's men took food from Confederate sympathizers to give to Union sympathizers. Union commanders praised Col. Kirk for his derring-do. Confederates saw him and his men as little more than hooligans and turncoats.

The war came to a close after Gen. Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 9, 1865. Pvt. Triplett was discharged four months later. Military records show he owed the government $129.99 for uniforms and other gear, offset by a $100 enlistment bonus the Army owed him.

Back home, tensions simmered between those who had sided with the Confederacy and those who joined Union forces, especially a regiment as hated as Kirk's Raiders. "Most, if not all, of these soldiers would be outcasts, to a degree for the remainder of their lives,"
Ron V. Killian
wrote in his history of the 3rd North Carolina Mounted Infantry.

In 1885, Pvt. Triplett applied for a pension and, apparently impatient with the delay, had his congressman submit legislation the following year to approve his request, a common practice. The bill died, but records suggest Pvt. Triplett eventually secured a Union pension of unknown size.

National Archives

Pvt. Triplett had farmland and a big house near Elk Creek, in Wilkes County, N.C. Long after his death, local men would drink moonshine, play banjo and fiddle, and swap legends about what a "hard man" Mose Triplett had been, said his grandson, Charlie Triplett, who heard the stories from his father. He wore a Wyatt Earp mustache and would pull the fangs from rattlesnakes, then keep them as pets in a chicken coop.

"A lot of people were afraid of him," Charlie Triplett said. "Most of the time he sat on the front porch with his old military pistol and shot walnuts off the trees just to let people know he had a gun."

Once, standing atop a car in the center of Wilkesboro, Pvt. Triplett cursed a local bank that had gone under and taken his money with it. "He was a cussing just like a preacher would preach," Charlie Triplett said.

Pvt. Triplett and his first wife, Mary, apparently had no surviving children, according to a review of decades of census records.

After Mary Triplett's death in the 1920s, Pvt. Triplett married
Elida Hall,
nearly 50 years his junior. She was a distant relation of
Thomas Dula,
whose 1868 hanging for his girlfriend's murder was recounted in the folk song "
Tom Dooley,
" which was made popular by the Kingston Trio in a 1958 recording.

Such May-December marriages weren't uncommon.
Jay Hoar,
a Civil War researcher, found 72 couples where the age difference between the veteran and his wife was at least 19 years. The biggest spread was between a 93-year-old Virginia cavalryman and his 26-year-old bride.

Many of the marriages took place during the Great Depression, when veterans' pensions offered some financial security. About a third of the wives were nurses, offering security for aged veterans, as well, according to Mr. Hoar.

Elida Hall's 1924 marriage doesn't appear to have been so blessed. She was mentally disabled, according to people who knew her. The couple lost three babies—Phema, Patsy, and Billie Coolidge. Irene was born in 1930 when her father was age 83 and her mother 34. Irene, too, suffered from mental disabilities, said past and current nursing home staff. Pvt. Triplett was just shy of his 87th birthday when Elida gave birth to a son, Everette, later the father of Charlie Triplett.

Irene and Everette Triplett were born in tough country during tough times. The forested hills ran with white lightning from illegal stills. Ms. Triplett said she didn't drink moonshine, but she got hooked on tobacco in first grade.

"I dipped snuff in school, and I chewed tobacco in school," said Ms. Triplett, who lives in a nursing home in Wilkesboro. "I raised homemade tobacco. I chewed that, too. I chewed it all."

Irene said her teachers beat her with an oak paddle. Her parents continued the beatings at home, she said: "When you got a whooping in school you'd be getting tore up when you got back in those mountains."

At school, children would taunt Irene about her father the "traitor," said Charlie Triplett. She dropped out after sixth grade, unable to read or write proficiently. Of her parents, she said, "I didn't care for neither one of them, to tell you the truth about it. I wanted to get away from both of them. I wanted to get me a house and crawl in it all by myself."

In 1938, on the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the government paid for Civil War veterans from both sides to attend a reunion on the Pennsylvania battlefield. Pvt. Triplett was one of more than 1,800 who went.

"Lincoln spoke in solace for all who fought upon this field; and the years have laid their balm upon their wounds," President
Franklin Roosevelt
told them. "Men who wore the blue and men who wore the gray are here together, a fragment spared by time."

Pvt. Triplett wore both, but he kept that secret during the reunion. Organizers housed him in the Confederate camp. The Gettysburg Times quoted him saying he had "fooled everybody" because he had actually been in the Union Army for the entire war, a tale at odds with his military records.

In 1938, Pvt. Triplett attended a Civil War reunion on the spot where the Battle of Gettysburg had been fought 75 years earlier. President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the aged veterans.

Pvt. Triplett died of cancer days after returning from Gettysburg, at age 92. His family put pennies on his eyes and buried him on a hillside covered in holly, pine, oak and cedar.

In Wilkes County, the local Sons of Confederate Veterans of the Civil War put Confederate flags on tombstones of rebel soldiers. Mose Triplett's granite grave marker has no flag and is conspicuous in its neutrality. "He was a Civil War soldier," it reads.

In 1943, 13-year-old Irene and her mother, unable to fend for themselves, moved into the Wilkes County poorhouse. Locals remember it as a grim, two-story brick building on the outskirts of town, where mice and rats scampered on concrete floors.

The Wilkes County Poorhouse

Irene moved into the poorhouse in 1943 when she was 13 years old.

The facility included a 'colored ward' and jail for black prisoners.

Residents with tuberculosis were housed separately in the TB hut.

Photos: Pardue Library, Wilkes Community College

The complex also had a wood frame "TB hut" for tuberculosis patients, as well as a two-room "colored ward" that doubled as a jail for blacks, according to a 1946 county insurance report.

Though just 10 years old, Irene's brother, Everette, ran away rather than live there, Charlie Triplett said. Everette Triplett made his way to Roxboro, N.C., and found work in a saw mill. He became a bulldozer operator and died in 1996.

Irene and Elida Triplett remained at the county home for 17 years. The facility shut down in 1960, and Irene and her mother moved into a new private nursing home. The women didn't get along and had to have separate rooms, recalled
James Richardson,
one of the nursing home founders.

"I didn't play around," Irene Triplett said. "I mowed the grass. I washed dishes, made up beds, washed and ironed. They had hogs. They raised hogs up there. I raised eight hogs."

Once a month, the two women would put their X marks on the VA pension checks, which helped pay for their care. At one point, Irene's brother, Everette, invited her to live with him, but she had grown accustomed to institutional life and declined, Charlie Triplett said.

Elida Triplett died of cancer in 1967. Irene Triplett lived in the nursing home for more than half a century until she broke her hip last year and moved into the Wilkesboro skilled-nursing facility. Medicaid pays her expenses at the home, supplemented by the VA pension her father earned her in 1865.

She said she likes the facility more than anywhere else she has lived. She gets very few visitors, but enjoys working on crafts and watching TV. She attends religious services. She inches her wheelchair through the halls. Sociable but prone to bouts of isolation, she often spends her time in the lobby, sipping a Coke and spitting tobacco through a toothless smile.

During World War I, 2nd Lt. Forreste Ellenberger was a white officer in the segregated black 25th Infantry Regiment–some of the famous Buffalo Soldiers. His widow, Florence Ellenberger, 103, received $1,113 a month from the VA to help pay her expenses at Tampa, Fla., assisted-living facility. The pension fell to $90 a month after Medicaid's contribution increased last fall. Her antique locket holds photos of Lt. Ellenberger and herself.
Edward Linsmier for The Wall Street Journal

Bill Collins was a cook with the 14th Cavalry Regiment during skirmishing on the Texas border with Mexico in the late 1910s. Mr. Collins owned a three-chair barbershop in Somerset, Pa., until his death in 1976. VA payments to his widow, Alda Collins, helped cover rest-home costs until her death last September at age 111.
James Collins

Shinseki, an honorable and brave man who has served his country well in the military, should step down as Secy of Veterans Affairs. His performance before a Senate Committee last week was disgraceful. He appeared clueless and unresponsive to tons of evidence that his agency was at many major locations manipulating scheduling of appointments so its managers "look good." Veterans have died because of thee unconscionable and unwarranted waits. He has been in office six years and has done little that matters to improve services to our veterans. And he does not seem to get what trouble his agency is in.

Unbelievable--$75,000 over her lifetime for because her supposed father fought in a war sixty years before she was born. I can't believe the number of people who think this is a good thing. She's just another toothless welfare ward greedily suckling on the raw, chaffed teat of the Taxpayer's exhausted breast.

While this article gave an interesting history of one family, it failed to explain by what mechanism in the Civil War VA benefits allowed a surviving adult chiild to be the beneficiary of lifetime benefits, nor did it point out that this type of benefit is NOT available to WW2, Korean,Vietnam or Iraq and Afganistan families of vets today.

When one really looks at the cash payments to Veterans it is nothing in the scheme of tax money wasted every day. The long term Mediclal is another cost entirley. The US Military spends more than that in one day on fuel cost alone.

"More than 3 million men fought and 530,000 men died in the conflict between North and South". Those are the battle field numbers. The sick wounded after wards brought the total to well over 900 thousand. When one lumps in the Women and Children it gets even higher, but why mention facts. Some are complaining about the cost. Let me present this fact. 3 million white folks fought to finally end up freeing approx 3 million people of color. But now i; because of my skin color should pay money because some ones grand father mother may have been a slave. Let me see a tax on tanning beds? Is that not a white man tax only? So i say Black or peole of color should pay a civil war tax to the suvivors of people who lost family members who fought to free them. But how that is overlooked. The United States Governmnet spends more on Welfare for Blacks than they have spent on any wars or pensions to date. Now write an article around that. Or is it too PC to tell the truth.When budget cuts come the first to get chopped is the Veteran then social security. So i wish not to hear about what it cost. Obama wasted 800 billion dollars plus and no out cry? But noise about pocket change to a senator 0f 9 billion and the outrage is loud. The first to go and the first to loose with budget cuts....I lost two uncles in the Civil A War and I want my Money??? Where and how do I apply for it?

For all of you who are expressing wonderment about the fact that those veterans' children are still receiving pensions all these years later, the answer is simple. That was what was written in the law passed establishing pensions for that war. Today's military pension system is considerably different because the law governing it is different.

When will we return to requiring students to learn basic civics? Soon, I hope.

Incredible. All the more reason that our government should have been wary of embroiling the country in wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, for which we will continue to pay (not only pensions but medical bills) for years and years to come.

Nice to see the "usual suspects" with their reliable negativity and condemnations jump right in to a story like this. Some of you will never learn as you see the world only in terms of yourself and your own selfish politically-motivated views/dislikes.

Back to the story which is itself about Americans and citizenship. What an amazing story to hear that there's still one person collecting Civil War survivor benefits. Yes, wars will always be costly reminders of the past and the sacrifices made by mostly unknown millions. But this is America and we stand by our veterans. It's about honoring commitments and standing by those citizen warriors ( who were of all political persuasions and POVs ) and stood shoulder to shoulder as American citizens.

This article should remind us that as future fights/arguments about government spending arise in the future, we must continue to stand behind our citizen warriors and our obligations to them as a nation. I'm proud to be an American. There do exist certain costs/obligations when you are a free nation and a leading nation based upon ideals. It's fitting that this WSJ article appears shortly before Memorial Day.

Many things could be said about this topic, but let's keep it more contemporary. The Bush administration with all their grandiosity and swagger and stupidity and shock and awe and all the rest of the nonsense, loves, as does the Republican party by and large, to pay lip service to veterans while their actions tell another story. They'd like to treat them like trash when they get home and just go away and don't cost us anything. Disposable pawns in their ego driven wars looking to compensate them for their flagging potency.

Want an answer to the VA hospital scandal? Very simple. Do not restrict vets to seeing employees of the VA and let them use their military health insurance to choose any doctors in their communities. They will get better care from those docs than the lifer versions of U.S. Mail employees working in the V.A. system..

Of course it will cost. And that is why they never use this simple solution to allow vets to get care from the healthcare community in their communities. It would solve the problem and have the benefit of showing the true cost of military adventurism. Of course none of this is factored in by the John McCain's and Lindsey Grahams, who never met a foreign problem that doesn't have a military answer. Look at the current nonsense about the Ukraine.

Until Republicans and Fox News stop the empty posturing of "strong" vs. "weak" and advocating rushing headlong into one military debacle after another, that is until they police themselves with some rationality this nonsense will go on and on. And when the boys and girls get home from war you can bet they'll want them to just dry up and blow away, lost limbs and all. They hate the cost you see. They only like to pay for the Star Wars movie part don't you know and don't want the general public to ever wise up to who really wastes the money in our society. The pawns of their latest war are just supposed to fade away, melt back into the background if not off themselves since they've served their purpose and no longer have any value to their handlers.

Did you ever wonder about that? How many of the staggering number of the suicides are the vets reading the never verbalized desire of their managers, that now that they have served their purpose in their masters' chess game, they would really like them to disappear and not cost them anymore money.

Finally, the only cover up in Benghazi is of the nut bag far right repubs not wanting this dirty little secret to get out about what their actions say they really think deep down about war vets. They care so much about four dead Americans over there in another one of those desert hell holes Bush and Cheney got us into? Please.

Thanks for this article. Tbe history along with tbe great photos is awesome.

As for the minimal costs (now) that surely will soon end; continue paying them. We are legally and morally responsible for them until the last beneficiary dies and the last bill is marked paid.

The annual tab of less than 20 million can probably handled in tbe petty cash account of the least expensive cabinet department. Or one excursion flight of Air Force One - the jet, not any vehicle the President is using at other times.

This is a response to David Oh. The WSJ software gets very confused sometimes.

David, you are a sanctimonious twit. You know nothing about the south. You don't know that no more than 25% of southern families ever owned slaves and that a few of those slave owners were black. You don't know that there were no trailers when there were confederates. You don't know that people are not trash.

There were poor and illiterate men in the south and there were poor and illiterate men in the north. They fought and killed each other because they were loyal to their respective elites. Those loyalties derived from familiarity and from mostly empty promises. The war was as much about the control of southern raw resources as it was about slavery - and, yes, it was very much about slavery. The north won. Slavery was abolished. And, importantly, New York became the uncontested banking center of the United States while cotton export was banned and ALL cotton cloths manufacture was located in the north.

You self-righteous progressives will not let racism die. You thrive on it. You insist that blacks remain victims in perpetuity while poor, struggling whites (your trailer trash) pay forever for the sins of long dead southern elites.

Yup, and the taxes used to fund the war also seem never to die. They also grow over time to encompass virtually everyone. Want an example. Remember that telephone tax (no, not the Obama Phone one) that was finally repealed a few years ago? The one that was enacted to help pay for the Spanish-American War!

I would put this headcount up against generational welfare recipients.. That would be quite the contrast and highlight a much larger fiscal drain. The democrats probably have that head count and list of check cashers at the ready. After all, they consult that list every election cycle.

I'm glad the soldier decided to leave the trailer trash confederates and defect to the union. I'd be mad as hell if we were supporting a confederate veteran - those folks chose not to be americans and supported the bondage of fellow human beings.

Great story, that reinforces what everyone should eventually realize -- that the sanitized, superficial versions of history that you learned in elementary school are not the complete story. US history is often surprising, sometimes shocking or disappointing, but always fascinating. Keep learning!

take a look around at the "double" and "triple" dippers - those who leave military or law enforcement after 20 years and then move on to second and even third careers in other areas of government. Cities all over California in particular are going broke paying for it.

How do you get "minimal costs"?? Don't forget about wounded vets, whose bill we taxpayers will continue to pay for a long long time. The bill for war is never minimal. As a number of articles have remarked, costs for that care will *increase* for decades to come as vets live longer.

Wow, so glad you posted in another comment that I might've altogether skipped because you lacked the courage to respond directly to my comment above.

On the contrary, I go to the south all the time for work, and I speak with enough people who let me know in confidence how they really feel after a few drinks! I guess they think it's ok for them to let loose on gays, blacks, and muslims because I must be a "neutral" race or close enough to white. I just sip my beer and nod my head and am happy I don't live among such people.

And please explain how you think "self-righteous progressives" will not let racism die - racism will always be around, unless you haven't heard about a certain NBA owner. And hey, the civil war still shapes attitudes in the south:

Also, last I checked, the name of this paper is called THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. As in, meant for people who work on Wall Street (or similar financial centers like Hong Kong, London, Tokyo, Singapore), not people in boonie-town USA. People on Wall Street generally share my views and politics while also working in this demanding profession, hence we live in the greatest city in the world. I typically wouldn't bother commenting, except the comment boards are full of such backward opinions that I enjoy poking fun at those who use this as a forum for their trailer trash values without realizing that the targeted demographic of this newspaper couldn't care less for them (and indeed, mock them all the time).

Explains why Mitt Romney was endlessly frustrated that a Wall Street bigshot like himself had to be associated with such close-minded people who ultimately ended up destroying his crossover appeal.

What's truly amazing is how the story illustrates how recent the civil war really was that there could still be that someone could have that sort of connection. More amazing still, is how far America has come in that short span of time. It's nothing less than breathtaking.

would have been even finer for all parties if the Southern states had the wisdom to avoid secession in the first place. Besides being a loser's game from the start, it remains one of the Very Bad Ideas in American history. Worse, the sort of rhetoric employed by secessionists continues to be echoes on the American right.

Perhaps we should be a little more cautious about attacking a country that never attacked us and was never any security threat to the United States. Both Iraq and Afghanistan will cost us trillions of dollars. It is foolish to attack the pensioners and their widows and children. Why not attack congress and the president for foolishly getting us involved in these wars.

No, you're wrong. There are many people who work on Wall Street sufficiently educated to know that the Civil War was not only about slavery. You, however, display in your posts that you just don't know much about the Civil War or the culture of the United States, in general.

I'm a Northerner and I've found many Southerners to be some of the friendliest and most hospitable people I've ever met. Making assumptions about a large percentage of the population of the country based on very little research and downright bs will keep your world sufficiently tiny for you to hide in fear.

David. I did respond to you (clicked "Reply to DAVID OH"), but the Journal Community software placed it as a high level comment. I then edited it to make it plain it was a response to you. Glad you saw it, Jerk.

I would not just sip my beer and nod my head. That is not an idle boast. I did not just sip my beer. I have spoken up and my "friends" at the bar shut up.

Your references to trailer trash are very offensive and stereotypical. I don't mind insulting you personally. You deserve it. But people who are not successful in life are not all the same. Your attitude is exactly that of a racist towards blacks. I agree that racism will always be around. Humans naturally divide themselves into antagonistic groups. Your help and Sterling's help are not needed.

Don't apply for a marketing job with the WSJ. They won't appreciate your narrow view of who are rightfully their readers.

As usual, an irrelevant comment. Have you protested to Our Dear Leader regarding his many military misadventures. But while we're on the subject, one does indeed wonder about the extended benefits payments for 4 dead Benghazi.